Gun Designer Defends ‘American Tradition’ : Weapons: William Ruger has spent most of his life designing, refining and manufacturing guns. They are known for their clean, efficient design and precise workmanship.

He insists it is not his fault.

Yes, William B. Ruger designed the P-89 semiautomatic pistol. And yes, when Colin Ferguson strafed a Long Island commuter train last December, killing six and wounding 17, his weapon was a P-89 semiautomatic pistol.

But no, Ruger maintains, he is not to blame.

“The world knows it’s not our fault,” said the 78-year-old founder of Sturm, Ruger & Co., one of the country’s largest firearms makers.

“People use all sorts of tools to display antisocial or criminal behavior and it doesn’t necessarily say anything about the morality of the manufacturer--despite the misrepresentation of some false-thinking people.”

These “false-thinking people”--people who press for gun control, who blame the gun industry for the carnage on American streets--vilify him. These days it is not easy to be a gun magnate or a tobacco executive.

But for William Ruger, guns have been a lifelong passion. And he’s not going to let that passion die.

He has spent most of his life designing, refining and manufacturing firearms. His handguns, shotguns and rifles are known for their clean, efficient design and precise workmanship.

His first gun, a Remington .22 pump-action rifle, was a gift from his grandfather. Ruger was 12, and was recovering from scarlet fever.

“It was the mechanism that intrigued me,” he said. “A beautiful, coordinated piece of machinery.”

Ruger first designed and built a gun in a neighborhood machine shop when he was still in high school. He dropped out of the University of North Carolina after two years to work on a design for a light machine gun; he went on to design light weapons for the Army during World War II.

After the war, Ruger met fellow gun enthusiast Alexander Sturm and, with $50,000 of Sturm’s money, opened Sturm, Ruger & Co. in a rented barn in Southport, Conn. Their first product was a .22-caliber automatic pistol that looks much like the famous German Luger--an instant and continuing success.

His partner died in 1951, but Ruger pressed on, building a business that now sells more than $150 million worth of guns annually, producing them in Newport, Southport and in Prescott, Ariz.

“We’ve never really been completely absorbed with any technical progress just for the sake of change,” Ruger said. “We like to build a handsome, accurate, practical firearm for the man who likes to shoot.”

The man like . . . Ruger.

Ruger sits comfortably behind a long table he uses for a desk at the Newport plant, where he spends most of his time. His large hands, crippled with arthritis, still deftly handle the early model Remington, Winchester, Savage and Stevens rifles he pulls from a collection lining the wall behind him.

A gleaming “Single-Six” revolver--a gun similar to the famous Colt “Peacemaker” of 1873--sits on the table among a loose assortment of drawings, gun parts and .22-caliber cartridges.

To Ruger, it seems, guns are a benevolent force.

“The deterrent effect of an armed household in this country has got to be a hell of an important beneficial effect. The fact that half the households have means to protect themselves has got to turn off a lot of would-be burglars and rapists and robbers.”

Ruger blames Hollywood violence for twisting America’s conception of firearms. “Movies and TV these days have sold the idea of the shootout as though that were the purpose of firearms,” he said.

“TV is an enemy of civilization. You take the program violence away and all these immature, slightly crazy mentalities watching that would no longer be stimulated by what they see on television.”

He believes the problem of guns in school has been “greatly exaggerated.”

“I just have to wonder how many schoolchildren go to school and worry about getting shot. If there are some rotten kids who are carrying a gun, that can’t happen very often. But it gets a lot of play with the press,” he said.

The real danger to American society, he says, is not firearms makers but gun control advocates.

“If Americans were deprived of firearms or if they were somehow made inaccessible, you would be downgrading the whole concept of American citizenship,” he said, his swollen hands clutching the arms of his chair.

He scorns the “group of people out there who just don’t like guns and . . . don’t want anybody to have them. It’s a characteristic of the times and it’s a very adversarial mentality.”

Not that he is worried. He is certain that those people are not in the majority; he is certain that fewer guns would not mean less violence. He is certain that he is not to blame.

“It isn’t the existence of guns that causes crime,” he said, “and there is no way of preventing crime by eliminating guns.”